The ACLU Warns About Big Tech After Trump Ban, ‘It Should Concern Everyone When Companies Like…
An official from the legislative council of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued a statement rebuking Facebook and Twitter after they suspended President Trump from their platforms.
Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU is warning against “unchecked power” and the precedent the companies just set.
“For months, President Trump has been using social media platforms to seed doubt about the results of the election and to undermine the will of voters,” Ruane stated, further saying the actions taken by tech giants should “concern everyone.” He added:
We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political realities make those decisions easier.
President Trump can turn his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others – like many Black, Brown, and LGTBQ activists who have been censored by social media companies – will not have that luxury. It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone.”
Reaction from the current chairman of @senjudiciary: https://t.co/VkDrDgjqds #TwitterBansTrump
— Steve Herman (@W7VOA) January 9, 2021
It wasn’t just Facebook and Twitter that indefinitely suspended President Trump, Instagram, Tik Tok, Snap Chat, and Spotify did as well. Amazon also removed the conservative social media platform Parler from its servers over the weekend. The new social media company said that they will be down for a week uploaded the platform to new servers.
The day before big tech banned President Trump Michelle Obama said, “Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection.”
The next day Big Tech followed suit.